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PlayStation 2 Celebrates One Year Online
Thanks to Yahoo! for hosting the Sony press release celebrating the first anniversary of the PlayStation 2 online adaptor, as well as new figures showing "more than 780,000 gamers with online connectivity." By comparison, a recent Taipei Times article says that Microsoft has 500,000 Xbox Live subscribers worldwide. The release stresses the differences between the PS2's 'open' philosophy and Xbox Live's more managed attitude, pointing out: "...the results of the open model approach include more than 20 publishers developing more than 50 titles for the PlayStation 2 platform by the year-end." Sony also trails the PS2 hard drive with regard to Final Fantasy XI, but hint at other uses, saying it "...further demonstrates the company's focus on extending the functionalities and capabilities of the PlayStation 2 for a total living room experience including games, movies and music."
The installed userbase for the PS2 is several times that of the Xbox. Pronouncing victory is quite foolish as per customer, Microsoft is having much more success with Xbox Live than Sony is with their online facility.
"more than 780,000 gamers with online connectivity."
What does this mean? Is it that 780,000 people have signed up, or that 780,000 people own PS2 online adaptors? I could say that 100% of Xbox's have "online connectivity" because every Xbox has an ethernet port built in. I think these numbers are very deceptive.
Take this with a gigantic grain of salt. This is a press release written by Sony. Of course the numbers are skewed in Sony's favor. Just like how Microsoft press releases say that Windows is a stable and secure operating system.
All Xbox Live Subscribers are broadband users. It is a broadband service.
PS2 are probably mostly dialup. Broadband is the future; if you want good gaming without lag, you need broadband. And if you want a broadband platform where all your opponents have broadband, you must choose Xbox.
Not to be a fan, I'm selling my Xbox on ebay as we speak cause I outgrew it.
You're only half right. Sony doesn't charge you for every game individually. Many PS2 games dont require any monthly fee. Socom, Midnight Club 2, ATV Offroad Furry 2. The only games I know of that charge you for online play are the MMORPG's, which makes sence. Its exactly like the PC model for online play. You dont pay a monthly fee to play Half-Life online, do you? But you do for say, Everquest.
Unlike the Xbox where you have to pay a monthly fee to play ANY game online. Wether or not it is only 1 flat rate. You have to have live to play online.
Feel glad I just used up the rest of my modpoints. Otherwise, I would have rated this -1: Troll.
It's blatently false. Out of the (quoted) 50 PS2 titles that will support online gaming by the end of the year, only TWO will charge any sort of fee: FFXI, and Everquest Online Adventures. This is as opposed to the Xbox, where you can't play _any_ games without paying a monthly fee to Microsoft.
This is also false. A number of PS2 titles support 5.1 surround via DTS encoding, wheras the Xbox only supports Dolby Digital encoding. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, SSX: Tricky, and NHL 2003 are three titles that support in-game DTS surround.
For someone who "used to own a PS2", you certainly don't know much about it, do you?
Yaz.
What's with the headline writer hyping it up even more by extracting "key" passages? Of course it's going to say the PS2 is wonderful!
Just like a PC MMORPG, you get a lot more than just being able to stomp newbs in Mech Assault.
:)
You get voice chat. You get friends lists. You get mute lists and other stuff that's persistant across all your games. It's a whole lot easier to get into online games, since you can rent the ones you want to try, and then buy the ones you liked (Everquest Online Adventures did have the 1-week game time test CDs, but they weren't really popular).
By making the fees easy, centralized, and predictable, Microsoft has taken a lot of the uncertainty about online play away from the end user. It's also setup a service that will ban the griefers, because they have to pay to get online in any game.
You can look at paying to play games as bad, but it's so inexpensive that one game is enough to break even considering all the cool extra features the service adds over the Sony online experience. The moment you start playing multiple games, your benefits are that much more. I like to play Mech Assault, Capcom vs. SNK 2, and Tetris online.. all have voice chat, the same friends list, and the same everything support under the hood
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The Xbox will let you use DTS DVDs and DTS cut scenes just like the PS2 will.
The PS2 DTS encoded games are only 4-point surround. Any 5.1 surround on the PS2 is done via Prologic 2 encoding, since those are the only 2 real-time surround formats available on the PS2 (barring some new algorithm for encoding audio).
Socom does PL2, as do most Sony 1st party releases from the past 8 months.
As for the online experience, well... you're getting more than just access to online servers with Live!. You're getting basic service guarantees and all that implies. Until Sony makes a real online service for their consoles, you can't really compare it to Live! since there is nothing else like Live! in the world. No one has complete, end-to-end control of hardware and software like this particular Microsoft service has.
It's like comparing the surround sound on the PS2 to the Xbox. There are 350 some Xbox titles, all of which support Dobly Digital. There are 500 or 600 PS2 titles, of which maybe 50 do surround sound at all (let alone real-time). You can't really compare that, since every single Xbox game guarantees surround sound support.
But all this talk of features ignores a major thing that people who don't own all the consoles (not just PS2/Xbox/GCN -- I mean all of them) ignore: you can't play features!
The PS2 is a great console because of its various exclusives, but the Xbox is also a great console because of its various exclusives. That the GameCube is a great console because of its exclusives goes without saying.
Games are what sell systems, not paper specs, not features. And comparing features that aren't comparable is the same as buying a PS3 because it pushes a bunch of polygons, even though there are no fucking games for it.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it been less than a year since Xbox live launched? All Xbox live headsets come with at least a year's free access. They were undecided about what they were actually going to bill when the year ran out - it could be $0, it could be $5 a month.
Either way, it's a nice service. I have Xbox live (my brother bought it for me on my birthday), but besides from a couple of games I haven't really used it much. I figure Halo 2 will be the real killer app for it though.
And the GameCube has about 400,000 subscribers for PSO I+II.
Online is finally getting off on the right foot, but still needs a lot more work.
OK -
In my household we've got every major console from the Sega Genesis onward (Saturn, N64, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, X-Box and, Gamecube). We have network adaptors for the PS2 and (obviously) the X-Box. My roommate is participating in the FF Online Beta as well. So, I'd say we're reasonably familiar with the offerings on hand.
In general, for novices, the Live! service is superior. You pay a fixed rate, and any live enabled game just works. There are networkable X-Box games w/o Live (Halo being one of them), but by and large Live! defines the current online experience for X-Box owners. It's essentially a peer-to-peer game matching service, there are currently _no_ MMO games for the X-Box. It also handles game updates and expansions (several new levels for Unreal Championship, and Mech Assault, etc). It also features voice communications with _all_ Live enabled games.
No matter how many Live enabled games you have, you can play all of them for the low yearly subscription rate of $45.
Sony's PS2 has left network implementation up to the individual game vendor. There is no "standard" user experience, and features are only available on a per-game basis. SOCOM has voice communications, but I can't think of any other PS2 game that does. I count this as a "ding" against Sony. Yes, it's conveinient for the developer in that they can pick and choose which features to implement, but each of them is responsible for implementing them; each of them re-invents the wheel.
On the other hand, this has left the door open for implementing MMO games for the PS2 (Everquest - which was horrid, and FF-Online, which is awesome, although it will require you to get a hard-disk expansion). Many games for the PS2 have their own subscription plan, which could be confusing, and can certainly be an accounting nightmare.
Overall, the PS2 online approach is pretty good for the nearterm - but with MS preparing to launch a couple of MMO offerings late this year or early next, along with "channel" based Live! services (Sports network, RPG network, etc), their online play may have more legs into 2005 and 2006 (when both Sony and MS are scheduled to release new consoles). I'm pretty sure most MMOs will have an additional supscription fee over and above the Live! service fee. But this won't really differ from Squares "portal" fee, and "game subscription" fees.
Anyone have any idea when final fantasy xi is supposed to be released in america for pc and wether or not it will include the expansion?
The thing that sucks about XBOX is we dont have EA sports ! I cant play Madden 2004 online.
with only about 1.5-2 million (total) users out there paying for online gaming, why in the hell would any straight thinking company invest a ton of money into developing online games? when you consider that there are probably 120-150 million nextgen consoles (ps2,gcn,xbox) total, that is a VERY small percentage of users actually going online.
makes sense to me that nintendo is holding out until the number make a little more sense. unfortunately, it kinda sucks for us gcn gamers that'd like to give it a try...
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